464 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



TABLE 1. Recreational visitors to forest land in the United States in 1931 



i Exclusive of the urban Hot Springs National Park. 



* National Park Service figures. 



s United States Forest Service figures. About 24,000,000 of these recreationalists were transients who 

 merely drove through the national forests. 



* Estimates based on known use of limited areas of this type of land. 

 6 National Conference on State Parks figures. 



6 Exclusive of parks within urban limits. 



There is, of course, a great deal of duplication in these records. 

 Some people visited several different parks or forests; some people 

 visited the same area on a number of occasions and were checked sep- 

 arately each time; perhaps some people made use of all seven types 

 of land for recreation. No doubt there were individuals who were 

 counted more than a score of times in the total figure. It is therefore 

 impossible to state how many different persons made recreational use 

 of the United States forests during the year. 



It is reasonable, however, to estimate that each visitor spent on 

 the average one full day in each park, forest, or private timberland 

 for which he was recorded. Some remained only for a few hours, 

 it is true, but many remained several days, and a few spent the entire 

 summer on a single forest area. If the estimate of one day per visitor 

 is correct, a total of approximately 250 million man-days were spent 

 during 1931 in recreational enjoyment of the forest. 



The national parks and the national forests have kept count of 

 the number of their recreational visitors since 1916 in the one case, 

 and since 1917 in the other. These records started just prior to the 

 era when long-distance automobile travel became mechanically and 

 financially possible for a large proportion of our population, when 

 consequently old notions of distances were altered almost overnight, 

 and when entirely new recreational habits were formed by millions 

 of Americans. The astounding increase in the number of both park 

 and forest visitors, as shown in table 2, reflects the fact that forest 

 recreation has grown during the past 15 years from a relatively 

 unimportant variety of diversion into one of the most universally 

 adopted forms of recreation. 



There is, of course, considerable duplication in the records pre- 

 sented in table 2. The standards of tabulating visitors have varied 

 considerably, also. Nevertheless the resulting inaccuracy probably 

 is not of serious moment in the face of an apparent 750 percent 

 increase in national-park use and an apparent 920 percent increase 

 in national-forest use during the brief period of 14 years. The 

 multiplication of the recreational use of these Federal lands has been 

 not only tremendous in volume but virtually unbroken. 



